San Rafael meal service delivers comfort food perfect for fall, winter
During the pandemic, many home cooks are missing the ritual of going out to eat on a regular basis. At the same time, we also yearn for a home-cooked meal provided with love by a family member, just like mom used to make.
A warming soup, some meatballs and gravy and mounds of creamy mashed potatoes are not fancy restaurant fare. They can provide comfort and ballast during uncertain times, such as the one we’re living through now.
As veterans of the food service industry, the owners of Jessie & Laurent of San Rafael have been coming to the rescue of busy families looking for kitchen help during the pandemic. Fitting in somewhere between a restaurant’s curbside pick-up and a meal kit, the home meal delivery service offers a wide range of cozy entrees like Spaghetti Pie and Beef Bourguignon, made in small batches that can be customized for special diets in many cases.
“Our meals are designed to be cooled and reheated, and there’s a lot less waste,“ said Jessie & Laurent Managing Partner Rick Graves, who purchased the 39-year-old business in 2019 with a few partners. “Everything we send out either goes into the recycling or the compost, except for the ice packs and the bags, and you can give those back and we clean and use them again.“
The meal delivery service offers an a la carte menu, except on holidays like Thanksgiving, and delivers ready-to-heat-and-eat meals all over the Bay Area, from Santa Rosa and Petaluma to the East Bay and Los Altos.
Due to increased demand during the pandemic, Graves hired Chef Tom McGuigan in August as Jessie & Laurent’s first culinary director. The longtime chef, who has cooked all over the world, has been streamlining operations while expanding the a la carte menu from its original focus on classic French cuisine to encompass more world flavors.
“My goal is to bring a little more broader flavor profiles to the table,” said McGuigan, who most recently ran the commissary operation for Bi-Rite Markets in San Francisco. “We have a sophisticated dining public in the Bay Area.”
With more moms and dads working at home now while trying to manage their kids’ education and extracurricular activities, the meal delivery service has been striving to get “bigger, better, faster, easier” while remaining true to its roots, the chef said.
“We’re very service-oriented,” McGuigan said. “We really try to cater to everybody, including people who are completely vegan, and we’re trying to create dishes that are appealing to everyone and that can be modified.”
Jessie & Laurent was founded in 1981 by a French-American couple, Jessie and Laurent Boucher, who met in France and returned to California to turn their passion for food and cooking into a family business.
“Jessie started out as a personal chef and had the business for 38 years. Then they retired,” Graves said. “It was about serving and bringing people together around the table.”
Along with more adventurous dishes from Southeast Asia and elsewhere, McGuigan has started to add health-conscious items like grain bowls and vegetarian fare along with brunch dishes such as frittatas. A kids’ offering is in the works to complement the wide variety of soups, salads, sauces, sides and entrees already on the mix-and-match menu.
“You can order grilled chicken a la carte,” Graves said. “Then add rice to it or put it on a salad.”
A native of San Francisco who has cooked in a Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris, McGuigan enjoys taking the comfort foods everyone is craving right now and bringing them to the next level.
His popular entree of Slow-Braised Beef Short Ribs, served with Heavenly Whipped Mashed Potatoes and Carrots Sautéed with Fresh Marjoram, flies out the door whenever he puts it on the menu.
“We can’t make enough of those,“ he said of the beef ribs. “They are a winter comfort food, and it’s going to keep you warm and happy, with the mashed potatoes. ... It’s like mom used to make.”
As a starter for an autumn-winter menu, McGuigan suggested a simple White Bean Soup with Garlic that he makes with his flavorful vegetable stock.
“I put all the vegetables in it and ginger and lemongrass and coriander and fennel and bay leaf, so it has a really round flavor,” he said.
Another easy but satisfying starter for the cool season is his Winter Chicory Salad with Parmesan and Walnuts, which marries bitter and sweet flavors with the deep umami taste of the Parmesan.
“It seems so simple, but it is one of my favorite salads in the whole world,” he said. “I make a really nice lemon vinaigrette and use a little bit of agave syrup and whole grain mustard. When you toss all that flavor together, it’s awesome.”
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: